I do not like labels.
They feel too small to hold something as vast and complicated as a human being.

At first glance, labels might seem harmless. Humans created them to make sense of the world. Labels help us organize, categorize, and simplify what we see. In theory, they make things easier. But over time, these labels became more than just identifiers. They started carrying weight. Heavy assumptions. Stereotypes. Judgments. And somewhere along the way, we stopped questioning them.

Now, we label each other so quickly that we forget to ask, who is this person, really. What is their story. What do they carry with them that I cannot see at first glance. The system we built to understand the world now works against us. It divides us into categories before we even speak. It decides our worth, our danger, our value, our future, without ever knowing who we really are.

We become Black or White
We become immigrant or native
We become poor or privileged
We become single mom, homeless man, dropout, felon, addict
And people stop looking past the label

These labels reduce us. They erase our stories, and they make it easier for others to ignore our pain. They give people permission to stop listening.

Take homelessness as an example. People hear the word homeless and instantly imagine someone who is lazy, who does not want to work, who made bad decisions and now deserves the consequences. But that assumption is so far from the truth. How can you get a job when you do not have a shower to clean yourself, clothes to wear, a car to drive to the interview, or even an address to write on the application. Some jobs require background checks or professional references. How do you build any of those when the system has already shut you out.

Or take the label single mom. People assume it means failure. That she chased the father away. That she has too much pride to beg him to stay. That she is angry, bitter, dramatic. But no one sees the truth behind the closed doors. Maybe she left for safety. Maybe she stayed for too long. Maybe she had no one else to lean on. Maybe she is raising her child in a home with peace and stability, something she could not give them if she stayed. The label does not show her strength. It does not show the nights she cried alone or the mornings she woke up and kept going for her kids.

I know these assumptions too well because I have held some of them myself.

When I first came to the United States, I was scared of Black people. I had never met a Black person before. All I knew about them came from the news, the movies, the whispers in the community. I believed the stereotype that they were violent or dangerous. I remember walking down the street and crossing to the other side when I saw a Black man. I never questioned why I felt that fear. It just existed in me, placed there by a world that fed me lies.

But then I went to school. I made friends who were Black. I shared stories, laughter, food, frustrations. I saw their kindness, their intelligence, their humor, their heartbreak. And I realized how wrong I had been. I hated myself for believing those lies. I hated how easily I accepted a label without ever asking a single question. There were so many things I had to unlearn, and I am still unlearning.

This is why I do not like labels. They strip away the complexity of being human. They make it easy to judge and hard to love. They create walls where we need bridges.

Labels convince us we already know who someone is. So we stop listening. We stop learning. We talk over each other. We assume instead of ask. And in doing so, we miss out on so much beauty, connection, and truth.

We miss out on the realness of people, their contradictions, their soft spots, their resilience, their grief. We miss the chance to be surprised. And more than anything, we miss the opportunity to grow. Because understanding someone different from you changes you. It stretches your mind. It deepens your empathy. But labels get in the way of that. They make us lazy. Instead of saying, “Tell me who you are,” we decide for them.

I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to walk through the world already knowing everything. I want to stay curious. I want to leave space for people to evolve. I want to meet others as they are, not as I assume them to be.

And I want the same grace for myself.

Because I have been labeled too. Immigrant. Woman. Broken. Difficult. Too much. Not enough. Each of these labels carried expectations I didn’t choose. Some made people pity me. Others made them dismiss me. And none of them told the whole story.

None of them says that I’ve rebuilt my life from pieces.
That I’ve learned to love again after pain.
That I laugh loudly, cry easily, dream fiercely.
That I’ve made mistakes. That I’ve made amends.
That I am still becoming.

So when I say I do not like labels, I mean this:
I want to meet people where they are, not where the world decided they should be.
I want to hold space for the messy, unfinished, beautiful truth of being human.

And if we all did that, if we asked more, listened deeper, judged slower, we’d find that we are not as different as the labels would have us believe.